Moab and Arches National Park

The next day was a long but very beautiful drive to Moab. We stayed at Kokopelli Inn, an environmentally friendly, hippie style motel with brightly colored walls and hand made furniture. That too was only $65 a night but each cat cost us $5 a night. Still cheap! We checked in, went to the Moab Brewery (yes, they have their own brewery) for dinner, and walked around this tourist town before settling down with the cats for the rest of the evening.

The next day we spent exploring Arches. BTW, whoever is 62 y/o or more can get a pass from the Forest Service that admits you and whoever is in your car to every national park and forest for free! I had one, and it worked! Arches is beyond my ability to describe it. For this writer a picture works better. No wonder the park is packed with folks who come to admire the colors and structures that took so much time to form. It’s amazing that the park was created on top of a salt bed that was deposited over millions of years by inland seas that came, evaporated, and came again to develop a bed of salt more a mile thick. The salt bed was fragile and collapsed under the weight of other sediment and rock deposits that came afterwards. After collapsing, the salt bed slid along a rock bottom and buckled, cracking the sediments on top of it that then pushed upwards like the fins of fish. These narrow “mountains” made of different materials eroded at different rates to form the arches and spires. You will have to go yourself to appreciate it.

Avon House

After stopping at the Baker City food co-op for snacks, we hit the road at about 11:00 a.m., ready for the nearly 8-hour drive to Avon House. It’s the longest drive-day we planned for the trip. Again, Fiona retired to the covered litter box (I put a padded liner between her and the cleaned out litter) and Chi Chi was once again, whiney and restless. She rode for a while in Lee’s lap while I drove, and then she finally settled down in her cage for the rest of the day.

Again, the scenery was expansive and majestic. The highway has been constructed in a valley surrounded by low foothills. Occasionally our old 2001 Prius had to climb over those foothills to get to the next valley. We were amazed by the perseverance of our old car. 2001 was the debut of the Prius, and our car has more than 112,000 miles on it, yet it climbed every hill at 65-75 mph without a single complaint. Even over-loaded, with the air conditioning on full bore to protect us from the 100 degree heat outside, it is getting almost 38 mpg.  We admired its fortitude and endurance and were glad we sprung for the $1200 for a tune up and an oil change before we left.

We usually get 55 mpg on the highway, so we aren’t used to having to get gas every day. When we stopped at an Idaho gas station for a fill up, we remembered that we’d left the wonderful convenience of Oregon’s anti-self-serve gasoline policy.

Avon House was as beautiful as pictured on airbandb.com where we found this rental for about $45 per night. It is located outside of Salt Lake City about 14 miles from the town of Logan where Utah State University is located. Avon house was more than worth the drive off our route. We arrived near sun down and enjoyed a spectacular sunset. As our hosts returned from their evening duties, they greeted us and we stayed up until ten sharing stories. It was fun.

Baker City, Oregon

Baker City is an iconic Eastern Oregon small town, which among other things, makes its living off tourist traffic from I-84. A couple of surprising things struck us as we entered the town. First, the streets are as wide as a 4-lane highway, but uncluttered with traffic and lined by buildings built in the 1800’s. Second, the beauty of the architecture was startling. Engravings, cast iron edifices, soaring towers and steeples – one building looked like it belonged in New York City, not a town of just under 10,000 people. That evening, while the cats explored the motel room, we walked to dinner on the Leo Adler Memorial Parkway along the Powder River. Barn swallows swooped along the river’s surface. We saw several townspeople biking and walking along the trail, and each one remarked on the beautiful weather. It had been a long, cold winter everywhere in Oregon and tonight the sun was warm and the breeze was cool. It was perfect!

The next morning we had breakfast at the Oregon Trail Restaurant. Lee looked at the local paper. He discovered that Wally Byam, who invented the Airstream trailer, came from Baker City. He died in 1962, and every year, original Airstream owners come from all over America to meet up in a local park to celebrate his life. (basecampbaker.com/blog/?p=134)

The paper quoted him as observing that you can choose a life that will make you successful and wealthy, or one that can make you happy. For the lucky folks, he got the first life by choosing the second one. Lee remarked that you could tell a lot about people by whom they pick to be their heroes. As we were packing our car to leave, a grey haired man who was cleaning rooms, told us he had lived in Baker City since 1970 and he bragged about how safe the town was. He said you do occasionally hear a police siren, but that’s only to blow the bugs and cobwebs out of the horn.

On the way to Baker City

We headed out of Portland on I-84 along the Columbia River. Once we passed the end of the Columbia Gorge at the Dalles, the scenery transformed from imposing rock walls and conifers into rolling hills, dotted with graceful wind farms, and covered by dried yellow grassland and grey-green sage brush. Bare, wrinkled foothills framed the scene. The cloistered feeling of the lushly forested Willamette Valley was gone, replaced by open, unrestrained landscape. The trip was underway. We’ve planned 4 nights along the route: the Bridgeview Inn in Baker City, Oregon, The Avon House (airbnb.com) in Avon Utah, and 2 nights at the Kokopelli Inn in Moab, Utah where, depending on how well the cats are doing, we may stay over a day.

The Day of Departure

There were only a couple of glitches to take care of on Tuesday morning before we left. One, our trunk, Yakima box, and back seat were fully loaded, but there was NO ROOM FOR OUR CLOTHES!! Oh well, it’s hot in Albuquerque, so don’t need clothes, right? So, at 8:00 am on Tuesday, we were at the UPS store mailing 5 boxes of clothing (nearly all the clothes Lee and I own now). It only cost about $150, and we felt that was a bargain. The second glitch wasn’t as easy to fix. Our credit union had ERASED ALL OUR BILL PAY INFO when Lee had closed his other credit account on Friday. The credit union told us that there was no going back and the best they could do is print out the information we had entered for each payee on our “bill pay” function and fax it to our local branch for us to pick up on our way out of town. We would have to re-enter all that info when we got to Albuquerque.

With photos to mark the event, and farewell hugs, we left Liz and Bill in charge of our house, yard, and koi pond. Bill had already unpacked his toolbox and had repaired our front screen door, so we knew the house was in good hands. Our cats were in their cage in the back seat and neither of them was very happy. Fiona, our older and wiser cat decided to curl up in her (clean) covered cat box and she slept for the entire 6-hour trip to Baker City, our first stop. Chi Chi, our 3-year old, cried and fussed until I let her out for a “guided” tour of the car, then she too managed to settle down in the cage for a 5-hour nap. Good girls!!!

Liz and Bill Arrive

Liz and Bill arrived Monday on the 4^th of July, just in time for our neighbors’ “Welcome to Portland” party for them. Our neighborhood is made up of vegan, bike riding, dog loving, farmers’ market shopping, progressive Democrats. They fit in perfectly!

Lee and I had finished loading the car the day before, so we were able to relax and enjoy the beautiful day with them. Cosmo, their senior yellow lab, was appropriately social at the party. At our place, he politely averted his eyes when he saw Chi Chi’s arched back and fluffed up tail. He seemed to know it was her territory, not his and he was a polite guest.

Getting ready

There is so much to do before leaving your house for a full year. We had just downsized the year before to move into our remodeled basement, so getting the upstairs of our house ready hasn't been so bad. It had been rented until March of this year, so it was clean and empty when we moved back upstairs from the basement. Luckily we found some great renters for the basement apartment only 30 minutes after we posted the Craig's list ad.

But there have been lots of other things to take care of such as applying for social security and medicare, researching healthcare options in Albuquerque, getting our 2001 Prius in tip-top driving condition, buying the biggest Yakima box for the top (It's almost as big as the car!), and DEQing and renewing the car registration. If we hadn't of thought to do that before we left next week, we would have had to register it in New Mexico.

One big chore is to prepare our two cats for the trip. We bought a large pet carrier, one made for a big dog, and we are putting both our cats in it. To get them used to it, we've been putting treats in the carrier at odd times during the day, so now our older Siamese looks in the box occasionally to be sure she isn't missing a treat that might be hiding out. Some evenings we bring the box into the TV room and put both cats in it and leave them there while we watch a movie. They just lie down and patiently wait for their release. We also took them for a couple of car rides, but we have to do more of that. During the last ride Fiona pooped and peed in the carrier and it was a bit of a mess to clean out. We put a soft bathmat in the bottom which needed laundering. Next time we will wrap the bathmat in a plastic bag. We also have some absorbent hospital pads to put over the bathmat. We need to do more rides in the car this week replete with plenty of treats. Just in case, I've gotten tranquilizers from the vet.

This week we are also electing to auto-pay all our utility bills, canceling the newspaper, and finishing the yard maintenance. We weeded, pruned, chipped, mulched, and set up an automatic sprinkling system with hoses and timers to run for the summer.

But the biggest adjustment has been in our attitudes. Yesterday Lee came home from his last day at work and told me there's good news and bad news. The good news: I quit my job! The bad news: I quit my job! It's both freeing and frightening. We are going to have to live on about half what we did... that means no daily morning espressos, no more eating out whenever we don't feel like cooking, we are cutting out the monthly pledges to charity, and we may have to scale back on insurance, which has been a major monthly expense for us. I know there will be more cut backs and I feel pretty queasy about our ability to economize. We've been preparing for this cruise into retirement, but now that we've actually pushed off from the dock, we feel a bit adrift. At least Lee and I are in the same boat and are good at pulling together as a team. Good thing we enjoy each other's company because it's going to be a long trip!